AGORA:Dragged from her chariot by a mob of fanatical vigilante Christian monks, the revered astronomer was stripped naked, skinned to her bones with sharp oyster shells, stoned and burned alive as possibly the first executed witch in history. A kind of purge that was apparently big business back then.

10/19/07

Go Go Tales: Lap Dance Cinema

A movie that's not just about stripping and lap dancing but 'is' stripping and lap dancing for nearly its entire 96 minutes, Abel Ferrara' Go Go Tales feels like a film that may have had something important to say, but the ever unpredictable Ferrara got really distracted by all those nearly naked writhing bodies, on his way to making a movie.

Ray Ruby's Paradise is the sleazy Manhattan downtown strip joint in question, a raucous, shady establishment run by a couple of raucous shady hustlers, played by Willem Dafoe, the Ray Ruby in question, and Bob Hoskins. They haven't paid the rent in months either, and so the shrewish landlady (Sylvia Miles) shows up to curse and bark at the pair, threatening to turn the premises over to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, when not cursing and barking at assorted customers. Matthew Modine also turns up as an investor, collecting his bill in stripper sex rather than cash.

There's also some monkey business going on about a lost and found lottery ticket whose redemption should simmer down the peeved dancers a bit, who haven't been paid in quite some time. All of these plot points by the way, are mere narrative sidebars to the endless bumping, grinding, breast jiggling, and rubbing up against leering married customers in seedy suits. Sorry, setting up a camera in a strip club and just letting stuff happen, does not a movie make. The only striking dramatic moment comes when a customer - a medical student salivating all over the lap dancers - goes into shock and attacks the woman baring all on stage because, well, she just happens to be his wife. And you know, how dare she show up at such a place. Even being reminded by management that she's stripping to pay his way through medical school doesn't cool him down.

Bookending Go Go Tales is a stripper in a ballerina costume who gets to perform ballet on stage when the club closes after hours and morphs into a cabaret. It seems that each woman had a dream they embraced creatively, including a magician and concert pianist, but had to give all that up to make a living. Ray Ruby himself wanted to be a singer rather than a sleazebag, and he does some really awful crooning on stage too.

Not sure about the message Abel is floating here, but if it's how money crushes our aspirations rather then making sellouts of us all, I'd wonder what price tag led Ferrara to abandon his own inner artist for this. A trip to the theater to catch 96 minutes of nearly nonstop simulated, vicarious sex is certainly a whole lot cheaper than your average visit to a strip joint, and should be a cash cow for Abel.

There is barely a single moment in this film that doesn't amaze and astonish. Whether focusing on the joys and tragedies of family life; the battles of exploited workers for their humanity; young girls selling their locks of hair for bread.

Or the flowering of this extraordinary woman as she slowly evolves into someone in the process of figuring out herself and the world, and painfully torn between being an artist and a mother.READ DVD REVIEW HERE

GIMME SHELTER: WFCC Member's New Book On The Housing Crisis And Surviving 'Real Estate Porn.'Women Film Critics Circle member Mary Elizabeth Williams has a new book out from Simon & Schuster, GIMME SHELTER, an incisive personal exposé on the housing crisis and surviving 'real estate porn.'Mary Elizabeth Williams is the cultural critic for Public Radio International's morning news show, The Takeaway, and a regular contributor to Salon.com. She has written for many publications including The New York Times and The New York Observer.

"Of course I want a home," writes Mary Elizabeth, "I'm American." Gimme Shelter is the first book to reveal how this primal desire, "encoded into our cultural DNA," drove our nation to extremes, from the heights of an unprecedented housing boom to the depths of an unparalleled crash.

Georgina Lightning: One Of The First Native American Women Directors

Older Than America: One Of The First Feature Films By A Native American Woman, Georgina Lightning

Native American filmmaker Georgina Lightning also stars in her fact based feature film Older Than America, as a young woman haunted by the ghosts of murdered Cree Nation Catholic boarding school children. And she describes how her own father's tragic suicide, like many others suffering such centuries of physical, psychological and sexual abuse at these government organized boarding schools, inspired her film.

Green Porno: You Won't Want Isabella To Get A Room

There's an eco-friendly peep show up on the Internet, Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno. From Isabella's six foot long insect penis to her flesh colored body tights boasting graphic anatomically correct female erogenous zones, this amazing series of short films promises never a dull moment sexy shock and awe.

The radiant colors and beyond imagination fantasy costumes and sets are indescribable. In our conversation with Isabella, we wanted to know if her primary impulse in creating Green Porno was to be sexy. And if not, what then?

Rossellini and Dragonflies Make A Porno. Not exactly bestiality, but don't expect Isabella to get a room. CONTINUE READING HERE...